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be anybody. Her apartment application lists a lawyer as the person to contact in an emergency. Least I don’t have to break the news to some heartbroken daughter or sister.” Pasquarelli grunted thanks to a passing stream of CSIs.
    “We didn’t get much,” the oldest one said. “Cleanest apartment I ever saw.”
    Jake thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “Something’s here, Vito. We have to look with our eyes wide open. I’m going to nose around again.”
    “Be my guest.”
    Jake did the roundabout again, but if anything, the apartment seemed even more nondescript than before. Then in the kitchen, amid the spotless cabinets and appliances, Jake found it. There, pushed back behind the gleaming pots, was one clue that Amanda Hogaarth had lived a real life and knew someone else on the planet—a battered book with a faded cover and spidery handwritten notations in the margins: Recetas Favoritas .
    Jake cradled it in his hands. A cookbook, a Spanish-language cookbook, not placed on a shelf for easy reference, but hidden away. Like love letters, Jake thought. Or pornography. He gently put it down.

Manny stormed up the steps of the federal building in Newark, New Jersey, her heels rapping out a battle cry. Tossing her red leather tote on the conveyor belt to be x-rayed, Manny charged through the metal detector, which immediately began hooting out a warning.
    “Step back out, ma’am,” the marshal instructed. “Any keys or change in your pockets?”
    “Of course not,” she snapped. Her sea green Donatella Versace suit didn’t even have pockets, and if it did, she certainly wouldn’t destroy its sleek lines by carrying around lumps of keys.
    “Unbutton your jacket.”
    Manny did as she was told. “Whoops! I forgot I was wearing that.” She undid the vintage double-link chain belt from her waist, dropped it in the guard’s basket, and stepped through the metal detector without incident.
    On the other side, the guard was holding the belt, calling for a tape measure.
    “C’mon, give that back,” Manny commanded. “I’m in a hurry. I’ve got an urgent meeting with a client.”
    “I’m sorry, ma’am, but security regulations prohibit lengths of chain longer than four feet. Can’t let metal belts longer than forty-eight inches into the building. Same regulations as on a plane.”
    “That accessory set me back a few hundred dollars. Do you honestly think I’d use it to chain a federal prosecutor to his desk?”
    “I need to measure it first,” the guard insisted. “I gotta find a tape.”
    Manny opened her mouth to howl in protest at the absurd delay. But before a word escaped, she stopped, grinned, and held open her suit jacket. “Look, Xavier,” she said, reading the guard’s name tag, “you’re insulting me here. I know I’m not a size two, but does it look like I need four feet of chain to go around this waist?”
    Xavier flushed as he studied her hourglass figure. “Um, I guess not. Sorry, ma’am. Here you go.”
    “This terrorism stuff is getting ridiculous,” Manny fumed to the man riding the elevator with her. “They spend all their resources hassling average citizens, and there are probably Al Qaeda operatives camped out a mile from the Pentagon.”
    The man said nothing, but he took a step away from her as she pounded the button for the seventh floor yet again. When the elevator finally delivered her, Manny was in a fine state, and woe be unto the federal prosecutor who crossed her.
    “Philomena Manfreda here to see Brian Lisnek,” she told the receptionist ensconced behind the bulletproof glass window.
    The young woman started to gesture toward a chair in the waiting area, but one look at the set of Manny’s jaw changed her mind and she buzzed Lisnek immediately. “You’ll have to sign in. And wear this tag at all times.” She spoke as if she carried a gun.
    Lisnek, a stocky sandy-haired man in a rumpled gray suit, opened the secured door. Manny soon found herself seated